Veterinary Website Design – New Client Conversions Part 1

Look like your practice's website?

You may be familiar with the line adapted from the movie Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.” While this is a worthy ideal, unfortunately it does not hold true when it comes to Internet marketing. With over one trillion websites residing on the Internet, and more being added each minute, the odds of your site being randomly discovered by your ideal client is beyond comprehension.

Let us speculate, for one moment, that just such a person has, indeed, discovered your site. You now have five seconds to capture their attention. Feeling challenged? We’re hardly getting warmed up. Not only do you need to keep them on your site, you must convince them it holds personal value for them; enough that they feel compelled to take the next step toward investigating a relationship with you. This is known as “conversion” – essentially your ability to turn a casual visitor into a potential client.

You may be intrigued by the very low cost of reaching such a large audience of potential clients. Obviously, you are not alone. What you may not realize is that websites on the Internet are very much like a planet of tarpaper shacks. Most have been erected quickly with whatever the owner had at hand and provide only the most primitive functionality. They are, in essence, useless.

A useless endeavor is a wasted effort. Perhaps, of greater hazard, is the misrepresentation of the owner’s professionalism. Certainly counterproductive, this could be likened to building a new office complex but forgetting to include doors. Clients can find no point of entry, or call to action as it’s known in Internet marketing, and will promptly leave. There is no direct invitation to pursue further.

Continuing the office complex analogy, just as with fine architecture, the human eye is drawn initially to certain components. In the architecture of a web page, this area is top and left and then travels down the page a bit before moving inward. There is also a science of subliminal at play.

You may be familiar with the concept that certain colors stimulate specific reactions in the brain; orange depicting warning or suggesting declassification; in common parlance, cheap. Studies have shown, however, that orange used in a certain proportion and position, coupled with other specific colors, has the power to incite response to “click” – giving your call to action the power of conversion. Knowledgeable site designers also understand the progression necessary to convince a client to pursue.

A call to action is offered, not once, but three times; each of the first two are followed by arguments to common points of resistance. Just before the third and final call to action is expressed, an incentive is offered. Understanding the value of the incentive is critical. Think of this as accessories necessary to the efficient and complete use of the product.

Knowing these studied responses and the order with which the reader will approach them can make a tremendous difference in the absorption of information – hence the efficacy with which you convert a casual visitor to a client.